19 Technical Facts SEO Beginners Need to Know

By Saba SEO, 9:00 am on November 17, 2017

Investing in SEO can do wonderful things for your business. However, you may have concerns about diving into some of the technical aspects of search engine optimization. Providers of local SEO in San Diego are here to remove your concerns by discussing 19 technical SEO facts for beginners.

1. Page Speed Will Be a Mobile Ranking Factor

Google considers page speed a mobile search ranking factor. It’s important to be mindful of page speed because it can affect the user experience. According to Google, the average mobile landing page time is around 22 seconds, but it only takes users about 3 seconds to decide if they want to stay on a page.

2. Instructions for Search Engine Bots Are Case Sensitive

Instructions about your site for web robots are referred to robots.txt files, and they are case sensitive (all lower case). Website crawlers will only look for these files in your site’s main directory.

3. If Infinite Scroll Isn’t Accessible, Your Site May Not Rank

The purpose of infinite scroll is to load content continuously as the user scrolls down your website pages. You’ll need a paginated series of pages along with your long scroll. ReplaceState/pushState should also be implemented.

4. You Can Structure Your Sitemap Any Way You Want It

Google requires sitemaps to be in XML (extensible markup language). Otherwise, you can structure your sitemap in any way that works best for you.

5. Archive Tags Won’t Affecting Ranking

The purpose of a no archive tag is to keep the cached version of your pages on SERPs. However, using such a tag won’t affect your ranking.

6. Homepages Usually Get Crawled First

Google usually looks at homepages first when ranking a site. If you want other pages to be considered first, add links to such pages.

7. Internal and External Links Are Scored Differently

Links to other content within your site are just as useful as links coming from outside sources. However, Google scores internal links differently from external ones.

8. Crawl Budgets Can Be Adjusted in Google’s Search Console

Google’s Search Console is an excellent source for all kinds of stats about your website. It’s also where you can adjust your crawl budget, which refers to how many pages a search engine can evaluate at any given time.

9. You Can Boost Your Crawl Budget by Discounting Pages That Aren’t SEO-Worthy

Some website pages, such as those with privacy statements or expired promotions, don’t need to be ranked. Disallowing such pages can improve your crawl budget.

10. There Are Some Sitemap Basics to Keep in Mind

You can structure your sitemap anyway you want, but there are a few things to keep in mind. The sitemap has to be UTF-8 encoded, and you’re limited to no more than 50,000 URLs that can’t be larger than 50MB. Different sitemaps are required for different media types.

11. You Can See How Mobile-Friendly Your Pages Are

Google is shifting to a mobile-first indexing policy, so you’ll definitely want to get an idea of whether or not your site is mobile-friendly. You can do this with Google Search Console’s mobile usability report to view how crawlers are seeing your pages from a mobile perspective.

12. Most Page One Results Are HTTPS

A secure version of HTTP, Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) protects data sent between browsers and sites. Since security is a big issue today, it should come as no surprise that most page one sites use HTTPS.

13. Page Load Times Should Be Kept to a Minimum

Generally, page load times should be 2-3 seconds. However, pages with a slightly longer load time won’t necessarily impact your rankings all that much.

14. Disallowing a Robots.txt File Won’t Keep Pages from Being Ranked

If you use your robots.txt file to tell Google not to rank a page, it won’t necessarily be entirely ignored. Google will still look at such pages for indexing purposes. Password protection and noindex tags or directives are more effective for completely blocking pages from crawlers.

15. Canonical URLs Can Be Transferred from Old Domains to New Domains

Launching a new page with a different domain doesn’t have to mean starting all over again with SEO. Simply transfer the canonical info from your old domains to your new ones.

16. It’s a Good Idea to Leave Your Redirects Alone for at Least a Year

With 301 redirects, you can effectively transfer ranking power to the redirected pages you want searchers and crawlers to visit. However, it can take a while for Google to pick up on this, so they recommend leaving redirects in place for a year.

17. Search Boxes Can Be Controlled

Usually located on the upper right side of a screen, search boxes highlight relevant content on your site. Google allows you to do things like include mobile app results, power search boxes with your own search engine, or disable search boxes altogether.

18. There’s a Tag You Can Use to Keep Google from Translating Your Pages

Not all website content translates well into other languages. At times, you may have concerns about how well Google can actually translate your site into other languages so everything still makes sense. Whatever the reason is for not wanting Google to translate, you can use a notranslate tag to make this happen.

19. Firebase App Indexing Will Get Your Apps Indexed

Firebase App Indexing is a handy Google tool that allows you to drive search traffic to your apps. Results from your app will automatically appear when someone who installed your app searches for a keyword related to it.

There are also plenty of tools and how-to tutorials at your disposal you can use to get help with some of the more technical stuff involved with SEO. When managed properly, SEO can help you connect with the right audience, which will ultimately impact your bottom line in a good way.

If you’re looking for SEO optimization in San Diego or any other city in the world, turn to Saba SEO. We use a variety of white hat tactics to boost our clients’ online rankings. From searching for keywords to designing mobile-friendly websites, we offer comprehensive SEO solutions well within your budget. Our experts stay up to date with the latest developments in search engine algorithms and offer competent services. To learn about our SEO plans and packages, give us a call at 858-951-1717 today.

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